Memo

Memorandum

City of Lawrence

Administrative Services Department, Personnel Division

TO:	Mike Wildgen
FROM:	Benefits Committee*
Date:	September 14, 2004
RE:	Benefits Committee-Paid Time Off Programs

The Benefit Committee has completed its first project as assigned by the City Manager. The project assigned by the CMO in June 2004 was to establish an ongoing Benefits Committee with a long term focus of reviewing and making recommendations regarding the City’s Employee Benefit Program. The committee was further charged with reviewing the City’s Employee Paid Time Off Programs and make recommendations in time for the CMO to consider recommendations and make implementation decisions for 2005 (before October 2004).

In order to complete the second objective of the project in a timely manner, the committee had to streamline the development of Benefit Program Objectives and limit its study of how our overall benefit program compared to our primary market to information that was readily available. The committee will continue to revise and refine the benefit program information contained in this report following completion of this report.

The committee recommends the adoption of the Benefits Goal Statement to guide future discussion on Employee Benefit Programs.

The committee reached the following conclusions regarding the overall benefit program:

As a percentage of total budget, The City’s personnel expenditures are roughly the same or higher than other primary market organizations.
City per capita (or per employee) expenditures for wages and benefits, are below that of the other primary market organizations.
In order to be market competitive, as defined by our Benefit Objectives, the City needs to devote a greater amount of resources to employee salaries and benefits.

The committee then moved onto the discussion of the City’s Paid Time Off programs. Paid Time off programs are Holiday, Sick Leave (including family sick leave), Personal Days (including Kelly days), Vacation, Wellness time off (including fitness days), Emergency Leave and Jury Duty. With the determination that the City could allocate an increased, but yet undetermined, amount of resources to Personnel Services, the committee did not look at reallocation of funds, but rather began with the comparison of the City paid time off programs to the primary market to determine where if any deficiencies existed within the Paid Time off Program.

The committee reached the following conclusions regarding paid time off programs:

Holidays fell one short of the market average, but increasing the City annual holidays involved many operational factors and should be held for a future discussion.
Sick leave fell with in the market average
Personal days were within the market average, but time taken for personal days should no longer be reduced from sick leave balances.
Vacation accruals were significantly below market average in all areas (annual accruals, lifetime maximum accruals and maximum allowable balances). The committee recommends increasing annual accruals and maximum allowable balances in two phases over a four year period to a level that meets market average.
Wellness time off programs are not consistent in the market, therefore the program does not require immediate action to bring it to a market average. It was determined by the committee that there are conflicting opinions throughout the organization as to the purpose of wellness time off and this discussion should also be rescheduled in the near future in order to resolve the internal differences of opinion.

The committee recommends deleting the practice of reducing Personal days from sick leave balance and implementing year one of the proposed increases in the vacation schedule in January 2005.

Attached is the detailed report outlining the discussion, conclusions and recommendations of the Benefit Committee between July and August 2004. Please contact Frank Reeb or Lori Carnahan if you have any questions.

*2004 Benefit Committee Members